7 Top Pay Per Click Advertising Strategies for 2020

You know that PPC is the right choice for your business. From improved conversions and better digital reach, there’s a lot to love. But if you’re new to digital marketing, you may be struggling to see the promised results.

That’s okay. Creating a great PPC campaign is a skill like any other. But by staying on top of some of the top pay-per-click advertising trends of the year, you stand a better chance of optimizing your budget.

Want to help your business reach new heights in 2020? The secret is to focus on the benefits of PPC. Grow your business with the help of the 7 top pay-per-click advertising strategies of the year.

1. Focus on Intent to Purchase

Imagine that you own a bakery. You may be tempted to control a broad keyword such as “chocolate cake.” When a user makes a search with the corresponding keyword, your PPC search ad appears right at the top.

Business owners across countless industries hold these broad keywords to a high standard. Surely, there are tens of thousands of people searching for “chocolate cake” every day.

The problem is a large portion of these users are not necessarily looking to purchase a chocolate cake. They may be looking for a recipe, the history, or a box mix.

The fact of the matter is broad keywords often don’t have a high intent to purchase. While it’s important to target one or two broad keywords as part of your PPC campaign, you’ll likely enjoy much higher clickthrough rates with high-tail keywords.

2. Take Advantage of Negative Keywords

A negative keyword tells your search engine not to display the advertisement. But don’t you want to display your ads whenever possible? After all, you only pay when someone clicks on your search ad.

That’s precisely the point. There are two reasons why you wouldn’t want to display an advertisement.

The main reason is you can immediately disregard certain users. Going back to our previous example, someone who searches “chocolate cake recipe” isn’t looking to buy a chocolate cake. “Recipe” would make for a fine negative keyword.

You may also want to use negative keywords depending on the format of your ad groups. One keyword may be better incorporated within a different group. If there’s any overlap, be sure to use a negative keyword to divert the searches in a specific direction.

3. Write Great Ads

Believe it or not, ad quality matters. In fact, Google will charge you more if they hit your campaign with a low quality score. You’ll suffer from a lower placement rating, too.

What’s the secret to good PPC advertising? Always personalize your advertisements based on quantifiable user data analytics. You should have a comprehensive set of different ad groups personalized by buyer personas.

With that in mind, always incorporate your keywords in your ad copy. Focus on the value proposition and be specific. Your users aren’t going to read all three lines of your copy to see if it’s relevant to their needs.

4. Design Relevant Landing Pages

Whatever you’re selling, your PPC advertising campaign likely leads visitors to a relevant landing page. That’s the hope, anyway. Some companies direct all ad groups to the same landing page, even if it doesn’t have information relevant to the ad copy.

If your user clicks on the search ad, you just paid for the visibility. At this point, it’s imperative you land the conversion.

The relevant CTA should be front-and-center on the landing page. If you’re selling different products or services with a variety of campaigns, then you’ll want to make specialized landing pages relevant to each.

5. Improve Website Performance

Did you know that your website has a serious impact on the benefits of PPC campaigns? You can have an amazing campaign, but it isn’t achieving its fullest potential if the website slogs. That’s because, after clicking your search ad, some users will turn away from the site if it takes too long to load.

When Pinterest engineers decreased their site’s load time by 40%, their conversion rate increased by 15%. That’s a sizeable improvement without any fiddling on behalf of your marketing team.

6. Determine Profitability

The top PPC advertising campaigns can determine success before they bid on keywords. And you know what? You can too.

It’s imperative you realize profit before diving into a marketing campaign. And if you’re already running PPC ads, you’d better watch the financial aspects like a hawk.

The math is simple. Look at the current conversion rate of your landing or product page. Multiply this by your average customer transaction, keeping in mind your profit margin.

This will tell you the ceiling of your cost-per-click bidding. If your keywords surpass this number, you may lose money on the campaign if the conversion rate remains stagnant.

7. Perform A/B Testing

You can always make a PPC campaign better. That’s the point of A/B testing, also known as split testing. Not sure which ad copy has a better clickthrough or conversion rate?

Then run both at the same time. You can activate indiscriminate A/B testing through most PPC channels. Be patient and collect data across a series of months.

Then take a look at the differences. There should be a clear winner, which will help you curate more effective ads going onward.

Improve Conversions With Top Pay-Per-Click Advertising Strategies

No matter the size of your company, you stand to gain with an intelligent PPC strategy. The top pay-per-click advertising campaigns have some of the highest returns in the industry.

But there’s more to marketing than PPC campaigns. Whether you want improved web design or better search engine optimization, you don’t have to go it alone. Take your company to the next level with our web services.